London, after the lapse of centuries, has been compared to an old ship that has been repaired and rebuilt till not one of its original timbers can be found; so marvellous are the changes and transmutations which have come over the "_town upon the lake_" or, _harbour for ships_ as London was anciently called, that if a Celt, or a Roman, or a Saxon, or a Dane, or a Norman, or a Citizen of Queen Elizabeth's time were to awake from his long slumber of death, he would no more know where he was, and would be as strangely puzzled as an Englishman of the present generation would be, who had never stirred further than the radius of the Metropolis, supposing him to be conveyed by some supernatural agency one night to China, who, on rising the next morning finds himself surrounded by the street-scenery of the city of Pekin. Costumes, manners, language, inhabitants have all changed! Viewed from a geological stand-point, even the soil on which New London stands is not the same as that on which Old London stood. The level of the site of the ancient city was much lower than at present, for there are found indications of Roman highways, and floors of houses, twenty feet below the existing pathways. There are probable grounds for supposing the Surrey side to have been some nineteen hundred years ago a great expanse of water. London so called for several ages past, is a manifest corruption from Tacitus's _Londinium_ which was not however its primitive name this famous place existed before the arrival of Cæsar in the Island, and was the capital of the _Trinobantes_ or _Trinouantes_, and the seat of their kings. The name of the nation as appears from Baxter's British Glossary, was derived from the three following British words, tri, nou, bant, which signify the 'inhabitants of the new city.' This name it is supposed might have been given them by their neighbours on account of their having newly come from the Continent (Belgium) into Britain and having there founded a city called _tri-now_ or the (new city) the most ancient name of the renowned metropolis of Britain.[1] Some have asserted that a city existed on the spot 1107 years before the birth of Christ, and 354 years before the foundation of Rome. The fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth state that London was founded by Brute (or Brutus) a descendant of the Trojan Æneas the son of Venus and called New Troy, or _Troy Novant_ until the time of Lud, who surrounded it with walls, and gave it the name Caer Lud, or Lud's town etc. _Leigh._ A certain Lord Mayor when pleading before Henry VI. assumed from this mythological story with a view to establish a claim to London's priority of existence over the city of Rome. The Celts the ancestors of the Britons and modern Welsh were the first inhabitants of Britain. The earliest records of the history of this island are the manuscripts and the poetry of the Cambrians. Britain was called by the Romans _Britannia_ from its Celtic name Prydhain. _Camden._ We need